If you liked this article check out Ben Metcalf in Harper's. Now these guys are much more interesting than that goofy CNN Sunday show that looks at the media... Howard whatisface.

THAT YOU FIND THIS PUERILE OUTPOURING CLEVER--OR EVEN WORTHY OF COMMENT--IS ANOTHER SAD REFLECTION ON THE INTELLIGENCE (OR LACK THEREOF) OF THE SELF-ANOINTED LIBERAL INTELLEGENTSIA. SADLY, JOEL SPRAYREGEN, CHICAGO, IL.

There is NO room for two of them in our White House.

Who's on First?

jpi msha

GW said today in his online chat, "My line in this column about Anderson Cooper originally did not end with "Can't we put HIM in jail?" In the version I delivered, it ended with "Screw him." ... I actually wanted to drop the F-bomb in the speech, but Dean Kunkel asked me not to."

Frankly, I don't care about Anderson Cooper. It's the Cheney comment that's important. Of course Dick Cheney is Satan! And it's time we all acknowledged it. If not Satan himself, at least the spawn of Satan. Can anyone point out ONE SINGLE THING good that Dick Cheney has done in his entire political career, except to benefit/profit himself and his friends?

When it's funny. But that wasn't funny. It sounded like something a middle-aged dad would write for his high school kid's newspaper, trying to be "cool" and "hip" and "with it." You know, like the "hep cats" when they "get down" and "rap" with the "peeps". Was it "groovy" or "def"? You be the judge, "daddy-o".

OK, I'm gonna "make like a lettuce and leaf" after "givin a shout out to my bros".

Dear Mr. Weingarten:

I've read your address, and I wonder if it's indicative of the standard fare at such events. How did the kids take the news that you hold one of the few good jobs still around, that the world is bad and getting worse? Did they laugh at all the right Colbert Moments? How did your Jew joke go over? David Sedaris tried that once with an NPR crowd and got some guffaws (of course, Sedaris is a comic writer, not a serious journalist).

Is that the point I'm missing, the one about serious journalism? Where is it? I see a lot of journalists (even columnists) trying very hard to deliver that sarcastic, sassy style that makes just about every topic, in the end, irrelevant. This when they're not outright pandering to someone they agree with, or someone whose good grace they'd like to be in.

I almost have to laugh at myself. To remind myself what seriousness and integrity look like in journalism, I've been turning back back back to a fat collection of the columns and broadcasts of Ed Murrow. You know, there's not a Jew joke or a HA HA HA to be found in almost 600 pages! With a dollop of sarcasm, with more sass, that guy (and his peers) might have really amounted to something.

Robert McDowell

E.M. Forster wrote a brilliant description of a genuine aristocrat, the concluding words of which are "and he can take a joke." Take a hint.

Give Ufansius a break. Yeah, I get the sarcasm too, but it's just not really that funny. I'll give you mildly amusing maybe (and really only the final line - you editor will be an idiot), but calling it "hilarious" is REALLY overreaching. "The journalists of tomorrow may not look anything like the journalists of today. I mean, literally. For all we know, they might have gills and three buttocks." Pretty lame. Maybe if I saw a video and could see his delivery I would think otherwise, but from what I read it looks like nothing special at all. So please stop being holier-than-thou in your critique of Ufansius's post. It's really annoying.

Of the glory days.

Political journalism aside, once upon a time, a long time ago, there was a Sunday magazine in the Miami Herald called "Tropic".

Tropic had such fine editors/writers as Gene Weingarten and Dave Barry. Why even Carl Hiassen and Leonard Elmore stopped by quite regularly. It was a grand and glorious place. It goes without saying it's a goner and has been for over 15(or more?) years now. Pity, that.

Thank heavens we still have Weingarten, Barry, Hiassen and Leonard, although I think the world is a little poorer for not havng Weingarten to comment on Miami. Still, DC's a close second for Target Rich.

Ulfansius, I had hopes that your reaction was just one more layer of irony. At least, I thought that was one way to read it. Oh well...

Well, at least now we know why the MSM was not amused by Colbert. It was too close to the truth, and for those who thought Weingarten was standing too close to it, too, he was not funny.

For the record, he is a humor columnist, and was, in fact, the one who discovered Dave Barry. How about that?! Funny now? I actually went looking for Weingarten online, because I recognized the name, but not well enough. Apparently, I've been reading too much serious stuff lately, or else I might have found him sooner. I did wonder whether he had ever been a sports writer, but did not find anything to confirm that notion.

I was only joking awhile back when I said something about Irony being dead, that it was killed by Absurdity. Maybe it's really true. If Irony isn't completely dead, is it just in its Last Throes?

I do agree, however, that the best news come from overseas, and not just the reporting, either. Their news really is better (maybe greener) than ours.

I wish someone like Weingarten had given the commencement address when I graduated. Maybe I wouldn't have fallen asleep!

Not quite Mark Twain, but not bad. I would have loved to have seen the reaction of the the Journalism graduates to his opening sentence.

Yes, I understand that it's called humor, and that sometimes (as I noted in my post) it blows right past me. Sorry.

Maybe Weingarten was just trying to be funny. I guess I failed to see the humor because what he was saying was so close to an actual description of the mainstream press that I just figured he was describing rather than lampooning. The traditional press really is contemptuous of bloggers. Many of them clearly do consider themselves "the only people in America intelligent and principled enough to tell people what to think and how to behave" (anybody remember Judy Miller? Chris Matthews? Sean Hannity?). And if Weingarten really thought that journalists were questioning authority and speaking truth to power, what would be funny about saying so? I mean, if you have red hair and I say to you "You have red hair," is that funny?

Sure, much of Weingarten's speech was clearly meant as humor; the four numbered points, for example, and much of the rest. But the parts that I wrote about didn't strike me as humor. Those points sounded pretty much like a matter-of-fact description of the traditional press to me, especially coming from a columnist with a Bush-administration-suck-up paper like the Post.

So, if you feel that I'm humorless and missed the point of Weingarten's column, I will grant you that possibility. I don't agree, but if you feel that way I accept your judgment.

Isn't democracy great? Don't you miss it?